[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. On today's show, we're thinking about food and family. Our next guest cookbook touches on both. It is stick season up in Vermont, that unique time towards the end of the year in between fall and winter after the leaves have fallen, but before the snow has come. It's a season that Vermont singer-songwriter Noah Kahan made famous with his hit song. Pastry chef and food network host, Gesine Bullock-Prado, also loves Stick Season. She's written a new cookbook called My Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons. The book is a love letter to her state and the kind of food you can expect to be served to you throughout six seasons.

Spring, summer, fall, stick, winter, and mud season. It is not just all maple-inspired recipes, although who doesn't love some freshly tapped Vermont maple syrup? There are recipes for apple pie and dog team tavern sticky buns inspired by a beloved local restaurant. As for the family element, Gesine is the sister of Sandra Bullock. Yes, the book contains their German mother's potato salad recipe. Her name was Helga, by the way. Before we get into it, you will hear callers throughout this conversation, but this is an encore presentation, so we aren't taking calls today. I started by asking Gesine what makes the culinary culture of Vermont unique?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Vermont, it's one of those touchstone states that when you just say the name, it reads comfort. It's like a code word in TV shows. Scandal, the president was going to retire to Vermont. In Friends, we're going to go for a romantic weekend to Vermont. You just have to say Vermont, and it's the code word for comfort and solitude, and loveliness. I think of the food that way as well.

Because we have those six unique seasons, or at least we recognize them, there is a flow to our year that is so quintessentially Vermont and what we look forward to, what we talk about, what we're craving, what we're all thinking about for the next month that it is quintessentially Vermont. The ephemeral is in the spring, the gardening in that tiny, tiny season of summer.

[laughter]

Then mud season, of course, where we're all tapping or thinking about tapping, or smelling that lovely scent that comes from the sugar houses. It is so uniquely Vermont, but it is something that I think every American shares that knowledge of when you say Vermont, when you think Vermont, when you eat as a Vermonter, no T, you think of comfort and loveliness and joyfulness.

Alison Stewart: Tapping for maple sugar, by the way. Vermonter?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Vermonter. There's no T, like mitten is mitten.

Alison Stewart: Got you. My guest is Gesine Bullock-Prado. The name of the book is My Vermont Table. For people, your story, and do a intro in the book, you say upfront, I grew up in DC in the Arlington area, and you spent a lot of time there. Obviously you spent a lot of time in Germany and Austria with your grandmother, Helga. Great name. LA, you had a previous career as a lawyer and in the entertainment business. Then almost 20 years ago, you find Vermont, or at least you decide to put down roots in Vermont. What was it about Vermont that called to you?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: When I was in Virginia, I was always a German girl. When I was in Germany, I was always the American girl. I don't think that's an unusual thing for many Americans to feel is slightly displaced and never knowing where you belong. When my husband took me, we were courting, and he took me to Vermont, first New Hampshire, and then we rode across the bridge into Vermont, across the Connecticut River, my heart just opened up and sang.

I'm like, this is home. Because Vermonters often look at most people who live in Vermont as outsiders, I'm among very good company. I'm not alone. My people are there. I found home in that place because it spoke to Bavaria, about the sweet little villages in Bavaria. It spoke to the Appalachian Mountains, which I adore because I love those gentle rolling hills, and it just spoke to comfort. It became home.

Alison Stewart: Could you describe the two extra seasons that Vermont has?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Yes. Mud season, which they're so practical. It's like, oh yes, of course that's what it's called. Mud season, because when the big thaw happens, the majority of our roads are dirt. When the big thaw happens, there's lots of water and that dirt becomes mud. Driving in the winter, no problem, but driving through mud, it's like when I was a kid, I was promised quicksand would be something that I would have to avoid in my adulthood.

Alison Stewart: That's what they told us. Wasn't it Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Yes. I was like, I'm expecting quick-- That never materialized. However, the mud is as close to quicksand as I was promised. You're not going anywhere. The good thing is that when you're stuck in the mud, you're going to smell the beautiful wafts of maple coming your way because it's also sugaring season. Then stick season is when the leaves have fallen and it gets quiet because all the tourists have gone and the snow has not yet come, and you look up at the trees and all you see is sticks. It's also near Halloween, so that eeriness is perfect. It's a little fogy, it's a little creepy, it's a lot of perfect because it's Halloweeny time.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about some parts of the book that are really particularly interesting. Use maple syrup as seasoning. What's an example of using maple syrup as seasoning?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Oftentimes in recipes, it calls for granulated sugar, and I'm talking about savory recipes. The most typical would be grandma's gravy, like a tomato sauce, where the tomatoes are never quite as sweet as they should be. Granulated sugar is usually added. I say add the maple because it incorporates instantaneously, because it is liquid. It also has that backbone of that butteriness to it.

It is three times as sweet but has fewer calories than sugar. Not that when you're making something super yummy that that's what you're thinking about, but those are all-- It's a super food, and it's maple. It's such an American thing. Only we in the Americas make maple syrup. It is such a beautiful addition to things that need just that little hint of sweetness.

Alison Stewart: I like it in coffee.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Oh, coffee and tea, the best, right?

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Mary, calling in from Mount Kisco. Hi, Mary. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Mary: Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to give a shout out to a fabulous community farm in Manchester, Vermont. It's called Earth Sky Time. They have fresh baked breads and spreads, and dips, and produce. The food is crazy good. They have community concerts all the time. They just add a lot to the community, and it's a family-wonderful, delicious place.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Let's talk to Todd from Northport, Long Island. Hi, Todd.

Todd: Hello. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

Todd: I just so happen to be picking up my lunch and heard this on the radio. I've never called in, but I thought now would be the time. I've been going to Vermont since I was 12 years old. I'm in my 40s. We have a family home up there. I find that whatever it is, it just seems to taste better in Vermont as opposed to New York.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: You are correct, Todd.

Todd: It's simple and silly stuff like milk and cheese, and meat from the butcher. Even when I go up there, I don't go out to eat that much. I end up cooking a lot. It is just something so enjoyable about getting local ingredients, slowing down, going to the farmers' market, going to the general store to get stuff. Of course the maple syrup and the apples, and all that stuff is good. The amount of craft beer, I'm always astonished every time I go up.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Delighted, I hope.

Alison Stewart: I think Todd has transported himself [unintelligible 00:08:17]

Gesine Bullock-Prado: He describes everything that I love about Vermont, that it just tastes better. That's why I wrote the book. It's like, I want people to have-- This is the book that I needed when I lived in LA. Because when you need to be transported, you think of those ingredients and that comfort and just relax, and you slow down no matter the season.

You can bring that beauty that Todd is describing into your life no matter where you are.

Alison Stewart: You are so kind, Gesine, to give us two recipes to put on our page on the WNYC website. One of them is dog team tavern sticky buns. What makes this different from other sticky buns?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: They are a legend in Vermont. There was the Dog Team Tavern, and it sadly burnt down, but it was a historic tavern. They were famous for their sticky buns, among other things. The best part was they served them as an appetizer. As a child, I would have been like, this is my home. It uses potato both in that it uses the actual potato and the water in which the potatoes are cooked. What it does is ends up making a very soft, spongy, glorious, sticky, sticky, sticky bun. You can make them monstrous dinner plate size or you can make them smaller. The bottom line is that you need that potato to make them tender, tender, tender.

Alison Stewart: Also potato dumplings. That was the other recipe. You're insistent in the book that they must be, "baseball-sized, period".

Gesine Bullock-Prado: I say if they don't look like a starchy whale breaching the soup or whatever it is that you've got them in, it's done wrong, because they need to be big. They need to be big.

Alison Stewart: How do you make them big without making them too much, too much of a good thing.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: I don't know these words you say, "too much".

[laughter]

What are these words? Baseball size is the perfect size. The other thing that we do with them, if you don't eat all of them, is you slice them up and you fry them as a leftover. If they aren't big enough, then you're not going to get a good fry. I think ahead. I think ahead of all the things that you can do with these things.

Alison Stewart: Here is Helga's potato salad. This is the blurb you write for it, little paragraph. "My mother's potato salad's a staple on our holiday table, but the holiday was always and only Christmas Eve. We never had her potato salad any other day because we limit our Christmas Eve celebrations to immediate family. Only a few select few had ever tasted the stuff." Tell us, one, about your decision to include this dish, because you're saying go for it. Rest of the world.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: I realized far too late. I think I was in my 40s. I'm like, wait, I'm a grown woman. I'm allowed to make this potato salad any time of year. Helga, she had a very strong presence in my life. The rule was only Christmas Eve. When I realized, oh, I'm allowed to do this anytime I like, and it is so delicious. We all know potato salad's very innocuous. There's nothing that you can do to it really to [unintelligible 00:11:24] it to the point that it's the gem of the table.

However, when you put this in your mouth, you will be transcendent. You will realize that potato salad should be and could be a meal of its own. The fact that she never shared it beyond that one day and with a handful of people is extraordinary, because my mother was a diva and she--

Alison Stewart: Literally.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Literally a diva. You would think the diva would want to share this with the world, but she kept it contained. Now, mom in heaven, I am sharing your potato salad with everyone because you and the potato salad are so fabulous.

Alison Stewart: We mean it, your mom was an opera singer.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Yes, she was an opera singer.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Chris from Andes, New York. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Oh, hi. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Great.

Chris: Sometime ago, I saw a Jacques Pepin make a tarte Tatin on the TV, which was a recipe that was created by the Tatin sisters. It was kept secret. Restaurants from Paris had to send spies out to find out what she was doing. Anyway, I immediately forgot his technique and made my own and just forgot about the white sugar. Just poured maple syrup in and cooked the apples in that. Then when it's time to put the puff pastry, I weave it into a basket, because you're not going to get the crust from the maple syrup. I don't flip it out, I just slice it with the top, which looks like a basket. Nobody's ever rejected this.

Alison Stewart: Needs, yes. Happy accidents. Right? You have an apple Tatin recipe right here on 147. What do you account for the success of your Tatin?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Making a great puff, and great apples. The two together. It's such a simple recipe with beautiful ingredients. I think in most cases in food, beautiful ingredients will elevate anything and you needn't doctor too it much. Then also, as Chris noted, maple will not go wrong with most things.

Alison Stewart: Amy is calling in from Ryegate, Vermont. Amy, thanks for calling in.

Amy: Hi.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Hi, Amy.

Amy: Hi. I hope my reception is good. We don't have great cell reception here. We are recent transplants. We moved from Brooklyn a couple years ago.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Welcome.

Amy: Thank you. The only thing that gave us a little pause was that, first of all, there's really no place to eat out around here, but we do like to cook. One of the things we were concerned about was that we wouldn't be able to find the ingredients that we usually cook with. I have to say, we've been happily surprised that even things that you wouldn't necessarily expect to find up here, like pancetta and guanciale, and things that we would use to make-- we do a lot of Italian cooking. They're here. People are, small producers are making pasta, are making these Italian specialty items. We of course expect a great cheese. We live not too far from Jasper Hill.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Lucky you.

Amy: We lived down the street from a dairy farm. We've just been so impressed. We're eating better than ever, growing our own vegetables, and of course all the maple and the maple creamies.

[laughter]

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Beautifully done.

Alison Stewart: We have a question from-- whenever we have a cookbook with their author on, someone usually tries to make something from the book. Our resident cookie monster, Zach, who came in and fixed your microphone, they tried to make the oat crisp cookies, which were delicious. I've had four in the past two days, but they couldn't get them to come out with that thin, lacy look you describe in the book. Zach wants to give it another go. Any suggestion to get that lacyness?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: Make sure your oven is hot enough. That is number one. Because what it is essentially doing, because it's so butter forward, you need for that to spread and spread quickly. With the right temperature of oven, it will do that. You also want to make sure that it is preheated so that that cavity is radiating heat. It's not just the temperature of the oven, it is the fact that it has been preheated and because ovens are liars.

Alison Stewart: You should get maybe an oven thermometer.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: An oven thermometer. I always tell people to get oven therm because ovens are big, fat liars. We can't live without them, but they lie to us all the time. Bumping up that temperature and just making sure that you've got it well preheated and then try again. Just don't put too much down. Put a small amount down so that there isn't so much that needs to spread.

Alison Stewart: For people who can't make it to Vermont but they can make it to the green markets of New York, which are excellent, can you share some advice on picking a maple syrup?

Gesine Bullock-Prado: It depends on what you're using it for. There are four grades. There's golden amber, dark, and very dark. They look as they are described but their relative maple punch is different. If you go for golden, it's very light. Amber, a little more maple flavor. Dark, very mapley. Very dark, very mapley. If you're baking with it, go for very dark. If you just like a hint of maple, go for maybe the amber, which would be the more traditional to most people's maple syrup. It depends on what you're using it for. If you're putting it in your coffee, go with whatever. It's all delicious. A Vermonter will go for a syrup that is darker because we want that flavor.

Alison Stewart: Vermont has a law passed in 1999 that reads as follow; When serving apple pie in Vermont, a "good faith effort" shall be made to meet one of the more following conditions; with a glass of milk, with a slice of chit or cheese weighing a minimum of half an ounce,-

Gesine Bullock-Prado: That's my favorite part.

Alison Stewart: - with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream. All right. We have the pie police standing by. You don't necessarily mention this anywhere in your book.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: No, the apple pie that I do have in there is one that, it predates 1999. It's called Marlborough apple pie. I wanted to go--

Alison Stewart: Oh, I don't want technicality.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: I wanted to go full historic. The Marlborough apple pie is one that uses sherry. You puree the apples. It's like what bananas are to bread, apples are to this pie. You want to get an apple that is a little over-ripened and super sweet, almost like alcoholic. It used to be the staple on Vermont Thanksgiving tables and it's been lost through the years. It's like a custody thing. There is a dairy element too, so it squeaks into it. It is not a violation of that law. I think that is the best thing ever. My favorite part of it, it has to be no less than half an ounce.

Alison Stewart: No less than.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: It has to be cheddar cheese. The fact that they didn't say Vermont cheddar cheese is mystifying to me, and that the vanilla ice cream isn't Ben and Jerry's. These are things that I thought they could have put in there as well.

Alison Stewart: Maybe you just assumed that it would be Vermont cheddar cheese.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: One would assume, correct? Yes.

Alison Stewart: Yes. My guest has been Gesine Bullock-Prado. The name of the book is My Vermont Table. I don't know if you didn't know this, but we happened to have had Noah Kahn in our studio. People know Noah Kahan has performed the song Stick Season, which went viral. He joined us back in December for a listening party and did it for us live. We thought since we were talking about your book, we just go out on the live performance.

Gesine Bullock-Prado: That's fabulous.

Alison Stewart: Here's Noah Kahan's Stick Season. The cookbook is called My Vermont Table.

[MUSIC - Noah Kahan: Stick Season]

Alison Stewart: That was pastry chef and food network host, Gesine Bullock-Prado, speaking about her new cookbook, My Vermont Table: Recipes for All (Six) Seasons. That is All Of It for today's show. I'm Alison Stewart. Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy the food. Enjoy the holiday. I will meet you back here next time.

[MUSIC - Noah Kahan: Stick Season]

 

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